Looks like nvidia is broken again. I just upgraded to gentoo-dev-sources-2.6.7, and remerged nvidia-kernel (4496-r3). When I tried to start X, I got a message saying it couldn't load the nvidia drivers.

Go to your kernel config. First, under 'Processor type and features'. Make sure that 'use register arguments' is off. Then, under 'Kernel Hacking'. Make sure that 'Use 4K for kernel stacks instead of 8K' is also off.

I've got the same problem. Seems like there's something wrong with the 4496 and 2.6.7. Would be very nice if someone had a solution, because I have a GF4MX and would like to keep the 44-drivers instead of upgrading to 5xxx.

edit: I was looking around a bit, and it seems like the best way is upgrading to 5xxx. I don't have a really good feeling about that because it's still in ~arch, but well, it's officially released by nvidia, so I hope everything will work.... we'll see.

I'm not too happy about having to use the 5x.xx drivers either - I develop games and the 5x.xx series has some serious performance issues under certain conditions, with large 3D objects and suchlike (which is unavoidable with this game ), and I do mean really serious. These problems are exactly the same on Windows 5x.xx series also. On both Windows and Linux, 4x.xx drivers work just fine, and on Windows, there also is available 6x.xx beta drivers (forceware) that has all of these issues fixed.

For now, since we are still in development, we are using the beta drivers while waiting for the final ones to be released... anybody has any idea how long it takes before Linux drivers follows (or, for now, know of any way to find betas for that too)?

I have the same problem with 2.6.7 and 1.0.5336. I use k3ddesktop (which uses 3D Desktop, and opengl desktop switching program) to change virtual desktops in KDE and under heavy CPU load (compiling programs) it CRAWLS slowly to the next desktop. Before it was extremely fast, with the 1.0.4496 version of the nvidia drivers.

Just another example of a large company half-assing the Linux drivers, just so there marketing brochure can say ".. we support Linux ..".

Does anyone know what is the latest kernel where the 4496 driver works ok?, I've tried 2.6.7 and 2.6.6 and it doesn't work in any of them. Now I went back to 2.6.1 and it works fine.
The new 53xx series corrupts my screen when I'm using Maya.